Interview // 2023-10-21

Shylmagoghnar

Shylmagoghnar already had me interested in what kind of musical landscapes would be created on this third album, Convergence, and then topped it off with a topic that touches everyone: death itself. It is intriguing to imagine what happens during death. He didn't shy away from this challenging topic. This musical journey is both heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time.

I wanted to hear from Nim, who took on this solo project album and gave it his all. He managed to humbly encourage others in their musical endeavours, paint a picture of his own creative mind, and the determination and support it has taken to become the musician he is today. Here is our conversation!

Happy Friday the 13th!

NIMBLKORG VIRTANEN: I was going to say the same thing. Friday the 13th, during a Halloween month. It doesn't get better than that.

Just curious - what is the weather like in the Netherlands? 

NIM: It is definitely becoming autumn right now. It's very windy and wet and rainy. Other than that, pretty temperate. We didn't really have any big winters here recently, so not a lot of snow and stuff like that. It used to be like that when I was a kid, so I kind of miss it. It would be nice now that I have my own kid. To be able to build a snowman or throw snow at each other and stuff like that.

Congrats, by the way! Exciting!

NIM: It has been two and a half years.

Here in Ontario, it has been warmer winters too. We had snow last weekend, but it didn't last. The winters are just milder, for sure.

NIM: Certainly something happening, right? Is the summer really bad there? Is it super hot at the moment?

It was pretty hot. We had lots of fires because of the dryness. There was lots of smoke in the air. Couldn't even go outside a lot of the time.

NIM: It is starting to become worrisome, then.

Your newest album, Convergence, will be released on November 10th. It is beautiful that you dedicated it to your mother. I am sorry for your loss. I am glad you had a supportive mother, though.

NIM: Exactly, so am I. It was a terrible time. It was short terrible time because between the time that she got diagnosed with a brain tumour and her death, it was only four months. It was shortly after both my brother and I received our firstborns. She always wanted to be a grandma, you know, and then finally she got that. It was like she became 20 years younger as soon as those children were born. And suddenly she became so ill and lost it all immediately again. It was harsh. But I agree with the fact that she was there for not just me, but everyone, her entire life. She was the mom mom. Everyone who needed a mom, she was there for them. It was fantastic. I feel absolutely blessed to have had her in my life. I am pretty sure I would have become a completely different person if it weren't for someone as great a guiding light as she was.

I was reading about when people are having struggles, and if there is a supportive person in their life, they do so much better. I just recognized that my aunt was my supportive person. I thanked her just recently because it means so much; how different it could have been without that person.

NIM: Did you aunt also recently pass away?

We just found out she has cancer.

NIM: I am so sorry. Like the situation you are in with your aunt, I hope that it does something for other people, that it also does something for you. It's dedicated to my mom, of course, but in a way, it is dedicated to everyone's sick or dying loved person. 

Absolutely, death touches everybody. Everybody is going to die. It has had a profound touch on my life. I have had a lot of death in my life. I like that you took this topic to music.

NIM: It is a factual and emotional topic. And no one is going to be spared of this topic. Sooner or later, it is going to be in your life, and it's going to be front and center. With that said, it's not an unnatural topic. Of course, death is as much part or life as life is of death, but I think most of us try to avoid thinking about it and pretending it is still far away, until it is suddenly in front of your door. It comes knocking and you can't do anything but open the door, and I think it is pretty terrifying thought. 

I thought it was pretty interesting that you took the perspective of the person that is dying, because often, we are pretty selfish because we think of ourselves and what we are going through. But what is the dying person going through too, right?

NIM: It's enigmatic, right? It's very interesting to know what happens to a person like that. The reason why I went with that is I used to work in healthcare - not for very long - but there were people who were in a palliative state already. I was one of the caretakers that helped them with everything. I tended to talk a lot to those people because it seemed like the most important thing you could do, like the entire cleaning and food and stuff like that, of course that is also important, but just being that person at the bedside that was important to me. And they would tell me about these things that they were seeing or feelings that they were having. They were often honestly quite beautiful, not very frightening. They tended to see golden lights moving across the room or they had been talking to relatives that were long dead, like a lost child or a lost mom was standing at their bedside with them 24 hours a day. You know if that is what is going to happen to us, it's not the worst thing in the world, is it? Honestly, I thought maybe it isn't so bad to be in that position. But those were all people who accepted their deaths. There were one or two people that had not, that were still struggling, because they had worries in real life. They had enemies and were feeling regret. They wanted to solve stuff and they couldn't, and that really ate them up. They went into death with their feet dragging, basically, and they really suffered. That made me realize death is not really a thing you should worry about, but the things in life that hold you back from dying, those are the things. 

Right, because they seem to really come to the forefront at that time - if you have the time. Sometimes it's all of a sudden. It's interesting that you are saying a lot of people were talking to you, because my experience hasn't been that way. It has been very shut off, and people not talking, and I always wanted someone to say something like, "what's going on? Tell me what you are seeing." I was going to ask you about Follow The RIver, but you did such a great behind-the-scenes video. I think people should check that out. Very interesting, the way that you portrayed the dying of the brain.

NIM: It was a good start. That's the second track of the album, so it is really where the journey starts. It had to be a strong start. You had to feel like you were being dragged along by this river. That you had no choice. There is no way back. I think Follow The River is probably one of my favourite openers. I know it's not the first track, but it is kind of the opener of the album. In that regard, I was very happy with how that worked out because it tells that story pretty well, in my opinion. 

There was also the other video you did for The Sea. Can you explain your vision behind that song, and the video in particular? 

NIM: The Sea was a very personal one for me. First of all, the album is dedicated to my mom, but The Sea, specifically, was written for her, during the time that she was still alive, and we knew that she was going to die. I almost feel like I didn't write the song, the song just came; it just happened. It was written to be played at her funeral. The vision behind it was the story starts with the river that needs to be followed. The river oftentimes eventually ends in a sea. The concept of the river is, of course, not an ordinary river. It is the river of life and death. It also contains fragments of people that were never born, things that never happened. They all either go towards or flow from this sea. The sea in that regard, to me personally, you could call it the cosmic source, or the source. Truth be told, I am not 100% sure what it is, because to know that would be to know the answer to life and death. I also hope it doesn't matter what background anyone is from. You can be an atheist, a Muslim, a Christian; everyone has their own vision of what is going to happen after death. But I think we all, to some degree, will return to a source, to where we originally came from. Whether we are aware of that or not is the big question. But that is what the sea is: this central source of everything.

So, this is the third of the trilogy of albums. How does it feel to be completed?

NIM: A gigantic relief, honestly. Currently, I am a one-man band, but the previous two albums were with a band mate, Skirge. I joined up with him in high school and we had this grandiose plan of we are going to make a trilogy. You know high school kids, they think they have the world in the palm of their hand. That was a little more complicated than we had expected, to be honest. Especially because at that point, we were still going to get band members. We were going to get studios to record us. And one by one, those things just got flagged and it was like, okay, I guess we will just do this ourselves, we will just do that ourselves. I ended up doing most of it myself. He did the vocals and lyrics, luckily. But I had to practice all of that stuff, the audio, all of the instruments, and that took over a decade. Even when the first album was done, I felt like we had this gigantic journey behind us already. It was already very draining, let's put it that way. It was great. I am happy that we did it, but I did feel very drained. And then of course that went pretty well, something that we didn't expect. So then we decided we wanted to make a trilogy out of it, so I guess we will just have to put our money where our mouth is. So, that is what we did. And again, that nearly took another ten years. So, to me this is the end of a 20-year journey. It was intense. I am very happy that I was able to pull through. 

How is Skirge?

NIM: He is doing fine at the moment. He had to take a step back because he moved to a different country after the second album was released. It ended up completely draining him. He wanted to be still part of the band but his motivations always came with waves. He would have one month where he was super motivated and had a million ideas and then he would have another month where he was just very down in the dumps, not really feeling anything. That was never a problem because I am the same way. We kind of just picked it up between each other. But then, when he moved to a different country and he was just so tired from the situation, that situation became a lasting problem. He had this down-in-the-dumps feeling for nearly five years. That was why we decided to split, but I must say, I am speaking to him daily, even if it is just text messages. I think he just needs some time and he will be fine. I do believe in that. He is a big supporter of the band still, despite not being part of it. 

Was the guitar the first instrument you picked up in high school, or had you already been playing other instruments?

NIM: Guitar was the first real instrument. Before that, I was not interested in music whatsoever. That is because I didn't really hear rock or metal all that much when I was growing up. I didn't really know that it existed, to be honest. There was some music I liked as a kid, but not enough to really dig into it. When I went to high school, of course, you start to hear stuff like punk bands and a little bit of metal. That's the moment that really opened my eyes. That made me realize, okay, this is super cool. I want this to be my life. The sound of a guitar that really did it for me. I really loved the way it sounded and I wanted it. I didn't even know what instrument it was, but I wanted it. Luckily, my parents, once again, very supportive as they are, decided to listen to me when I said, "Mom! Dad! I want to play guitar." Despite them thinking that I hated music for most of my life, suddenly I wanted a guitar. They probably thought I would play it once and I would just dump it in a corner, but I didn't. I kept playing it. Guitar is my real, and still my central, instrument.

So they didn't play instruments or anything. You were the first one in your household to?

NIM: No, my brother was in a symphony orchestra - a local orchestra. He played the trombone. He did so for many years, since he was somewhere between five and eight years old. So, for a very long time. He was really the musician of the household, which was cool by the way, because when I started playing guitar, he also picked up a guitar to play together with me. We would play stuff like Iron Maiden and Metallica together, which I still have fond memories of. But sometimes he also picked up his trombone to play together with the guitar. It was a very weird combo, but it worked. That is exactly why, during the second album, there was one song that was a little more symphonic - The Chosen Path - and there's a tiny trombone solo from him there. It was specifically because I wanted to put the spotlight back on him for a moment for basically being my musical brother for all those years. My older brother, so I look up to him. 

In terms of the trilogy of albums, did you know from the beginning what the topics were going to be, or did that get shaped over time?

NIM: To a degree, yes. We always knew what we wanted the music to be about. It didn't take shape until those albums happened. For example, the third album, at first, was going to be called Transcendence, but it almost sounds religious. It's fine with me if people interpret the music from a religious standpoint, but I don't want to imply that it is supposed to be this angelic thing. That's why I tuned it down a little bit, to be a more psychedelic topic. The album titles were not decided, but we did know roughly the direction we wanted to go. The first album being more earthly topics, feelings toward humanity, towards yourself. The second album being more time and space conundrum, and finding your place in that. And the third album, the journey of death was probably unavoidable. That seemed to me like the only logical conclusion of the journey.

You have Schizoaffective disorder; I know you are open about that. It seems like it has a direct effect on your energy, since there are times when you are shut down and times when you are more full of life and ideas, and you have learned to work with this. Can you explain how the composition process goes?

NIM: I have to split it up in three parts because of the Schizoaffective disorder: there is the peak, the mania, and the more normal state, and then there is a depression. I can only do specific things during specific stages of that curve. So during the mania, I am kind of just writing like a machine. I am getting so many ideas that I just have to type and write, and hum things into my phone. So, I will just create this pile of content. It is very unfiltered. And that is exactly where the problem with that lies. It could be that there are some complete gold nuggets in there, but 80-90% of it is probably just complete manic mess. It's also written from a perspective where everything suddenly makes sense to me. All of these brilliant insights. You suddenly understand how the world works, how death works, how life works, all of it. And when you come down from that and you read those notes back, you have absolutely no idea what it says. What the hell did I write down here? This makes no sense whatsoever. So during that phase, that intermediate phase so to say, that's when I really throw away everything that I don't need, cut away everything that is not useful, and try to filter it down. And maybe those few nuggets that you find, those I put somewhere and go, okay, I can work with it. That's also usually the phase where the outline for an album is made because I don't write albums as a collection of songs, I really write them with certain stages, and the stages get filled in with songs. So, I may get the idea of the album from the manic phase, but I have to condense it into usable steps in the normal phase. That is also when most of the productive writing and production happens, because I cannot produce music while I am depressive. I also can't produce music while I am manic because I just don't get anything done in that regard. That is the normal phase, that is the most useful phase, I would say. Then comes depressive phase, and I find it unbearable to touch any instruments. Everything I do just sounds absolutely horrible to me, and I am pretty convinced I should just stop making music and never touch an instrument again. It's really that bad. The good thing is, over the years, I have conditioned myself to know that this goes away eventually. It usually takes two to three months, so it's a pretty long time. And since it takes so long, I don't want to waste my time. I want to do something, or else the albums are going to take ten years, again. So, I tend to do the jobs that I hate doing anyway at that time, like editing music, that kind of stuff. I can't think of anything right now, but I generally do the boring, non-creative tasks. They need to be done anyway. I hate doing them, so I may as well do them when I'm already feeling bad. What's going to happen? Am I going to feel worse? You do that bad stuff during the bad times, and the good stuff during the good times.

You sound very motivated! I have been trying to learn to play guitar for years, and I have an attention deficit problem so I keep losing the interest and then going back. It's like a cycle. 

NIM: That seems really terrible to me. I am convinced that anyone can learn anything, but I can see how that would definitely be a problem. Let's put it that way. That doesn't make it easier for you.

There is also the piece of having talent, right? Like, obviously, you have talent.

NIM: I personally don't believe. I am not a believer in talent. I tend to believe there is a linear line between input and output. 

What you put in comes out. You put your work into it and then... Yeah.

NIM: More or less, yeah. Of course, I cannot deny that there are certain factors that can help someone like, for example, your personality, and like you said, if you have a disorder that makes it harder for you, then I can see how that would block you from making the first steps easier. But I do believe that if you can find a way to deal with that... Sorry - struggling to find the word... Challenge. I also have challenges and I have found a way to break through them, which makes it possible for me to do them. I am convinced that if I didn't have these challenges, I would probably be producing an album every year. So that is why I say I am not really a believer of the word "talent," because I think the word "talent" can make you believe that you can't do it. That's something that I want to avoid. I believe you can learn to play guitar, for sure. It may take a little bit longer to get started because you have this barrier, but as soon as you start enjoying it, you will never want to stop anymore. That is the thing, it feels good to be good at something. 

You have said before, sometimes it feels like you have one foot in this world and one in another world. I was going to ask you what world is music in, but it seems like it is in both, maybe?

NIM: You picked up well on that. Yeah, you are correct. It comes originally from that other world and then it gets translated into this one, mostly. Sometimes it's just jamming in this world. But I feel like the background to a lot of the music and inspiration is very dreamy, I guess you call it. It is not really based on normal logic. While the story is building in my head, if I would write it down and show it to someone they would probably think I am insane. Maybe rightfully so, I don't know. It doesn't really make sense in that regard. It is very similar to when you have a dream, you wake up and you write it down quickly, it makes sense. But when you read it half a day later, it starts to disintegrate. You don't really understand your logic anymore. Music kind of comes from a place like that, and it's probably not 100% the same anymore, because the way I heard it in the dream, or let's call it a psychotic phase, it's not exactly the same as it was in that world. But I do try to interpret it as best I can. 

I remember you saying that you do hear music in your dreams, sometimes. I wondered, is it actual melodies and arrangements, or is it more the emotions and visuals, and do you have control of it? Because I have lots of vivid dreams and stuff, but when I wake up, I only remember the emotion of it, or the upset. I don't remember the details.

NIM: Before I answer that, there is something that I wanted to ask you. Do you record your dreams? Because if you haven't, I think there is something to be had there. I think dreams are interesting. For that reason, I have been doing that as well. I also have very strong, vivid dreams, and I try to write down as many of them as I can. So after a while, when you read them back, you start to find patterns in your dreams and you become so good at recognizing your own patterns that, as you get into those dreams, first of all, you find them easier to remember, and second of all, because you recognize the patterns, you will have many more lucid dreams. When you can control them, that is really awesome, right? I think some of the most beautiful things in life can be seen in a lucid dream. Doing that can help you have them more. But to answer your question, I don't always control them, no. Oftentimes they really are melodies. Not just melodies, but an entire orchestra. I can hear everything. I can hear an entire song playing as if I am listening to the radio. It's completely mixed and everything, which is the problem, because as soon as I wake up, I somehow have to manage to record all of that within the seconds that you have to really write something like that down. When you are losing the notes one after the other. I have a vast collection of phone recordings of me just humming with a broken voice to somehow capture what I hear, like the melody, the beat, what was the guitar doing? What was the vocal sounding like? That's usually what happens, and I have no control over those. They just happen. But there have been moments where I was lucid, and I kind of challenged the dream to kind of like show me what you got. One recurring pattern in my dreams is when I look at the stars, they start to shift and make patterns, or there is like a spaceship battle, like a million tiny spaceships. There is always something happening with the stars, basically. So at some point, I was lucid and I just really wanted to see what it can do. So, I said okay, show me what you got. And I looked into the sky and I saw the stars and they started shifting, okay. I had seen that before. And I kind of just let the dream know I am not impressed, I have seen you do better. This cannot be all of it, right? That was really the right thing to say, because a beautiful picture started appearing in the stars. Imagine the most brilliant things that humankind has ever made just kept popping into the stars and they shifted every second to a new one. It was the most mind-blowing thing that I have ever seen. And as that was happening, a melody started rising up. It wasn't even a guitar melody. It was a melody of an unknown instrument. That melody I ended up recording for some album. In any case, I just could not believe the beauty that I was witnessing. Even while it was happening, I realized this is coming from my brain right now. This is happening in my head. I am not sure if I can believe that, because this is too beautiful. It's too great. Even while I was in my dream I almost had a religious breakdown, right there and then. I was like, this is being channelled to me. This cannot possibly be one human brain creating this. It is just too beautiful. That's from one dream, so. Dreams are beautiful, dreams are amazing, and they should never be underestimated. 

Where did you find Ming, from Void Visuals, who did your artwork and videos? 

NIM: We lived in the same household for a while. I was already with my - then it was girlfriend, now she is my wife. We were living in a house and he was there, too. He was a visual artist and he was always painting, and he also made documentaries and stuff like that. He was doing film school at the time. I always just liked what he was making. We kind of lived parallel to each other. We did not have a lot of contact back then. It was more or less a community that we lived in back then. There was a lot of mutual respect. I was learning audio at the time, and he was learning video at the time. In that way, we kind of got interested into each others work. So, at some point we decided, hey, you know what? Maybe we should do something together. We did a couple of documentaries. I mixed a couple of his songs and stuff like that. We noticed, okay, this works really well. We are a very good team. That was late teenage years for us. At some point you actually realize, I guess we should make some money now and do something with that. So, we decided to get a little bit of a you scratch my back, I scratch yours deal going between the two of us. He pays for my work. I pay for his work. But ever since he has been on board to create all of the art and all of the visuals for Shylmagoghnar. It is just an easy collaboration, and by now, I can truly call him a friend of mine. 

I noticed in the videos there was a colour palette - blues for one and greys for the other.

NIM: That is very him, and also the mirrored image thing that he was doing. That was 100% his idea. He likes doing these factual shapes and zooms and stuff like that. He is a pretty spiritual person. He is quite unlike me in many regards, but that makes the collaboration all the more fun. I absolutely let him do his thing. I think every artist should have his own input. After all, if I didn't like his work, why would I hire him, right? 

I was going to ask you what mood or emotion would describe this album about death itself, but then I thought there can't be one to describe it. I mean, how can you describe the end of life?

NIM: I think that is correct. I think it goes through all of the motions and emotions. I wouldn't say that it specifically goes through the stages of grief. I didn't do that on purpose. Maybe it does, I should actually check that. But there are moments of hope on the album. There are also moments of struggle, and moments of fear. It is a very mixed bag of emotion. It ends, of course, in the sweet release and being able to let go of things without pain. That's kind of how I imagine the best kind of death would be, but it is definitely not only positivity, let's put it that way. There is a literal monster that tries to eat the protagonist, at some point, who preys upon the travellers that are going through these realms, so to say. It is there and it tries to pretend to be some kind of godly figure so it can envelope them and slowly eat them. That is completely opposite of The Sea. You have to pass that to be able to get through to The Sea. It's pretty varying.

Was there a song that was extra challenging for you to complete?

NIM: I think all of them had spots that I really struggled with, with the exception of The Sea. The Sea wrote itself. Follow the River, the lyrics were, I would not say challenging technically, but I was writing them as the entire situation with my mom was happening. They just really hurt. Recording it was a very painful ordeal. I was really down in the dumps on that day. I was so sad. I had just visited her and she was just really - as moms are - just pretending to be alright. And really doing her best to be kind and blah and I was like, mom, you can drop the act. I know that you are very sick, just please don't try to hide it from me. It's okay. You can't help it. We are not going to be disappointed in you for suffering from cancer. Who would do that? So yeah, when I came back from that, I felt such built-up sadness and pain that I decided to just record those lyrics then and there, right away. Particularly the end of that song. The entire bit. All that remains is to follow the river. So that one is really filled with that pain. It was particularly tough for me.

Can you tell me about a piece of artwork that is not music that is dear to you, whether it is on your wall, skin, or something you own? 

NIM: I don't own it, but The Scream by Edvard Munch is probably my favourite artwork of all time. I think that is the perfect encapsulation of anxiety and having that moment where your world shatters around you, and you feel like you are being torn into a different dimension. It practically looks like a different dimension around him. But what I like about it is the people on the bridge behind them, and they probably don't know it is a thing. To them, he is just this guy standing there, just breathing slightly louder than normally, probably. That's always the horror of this kind of stuff. Panic attacks, psychosis, things like that. You are completely losing yourself, your reality is disintegrating, but to everyone around you it is completely unnoticeable. I think he is the one person that really managed to capture that in a single image. Yeah, that's my favourite. It's a pretty old one. There are like a hundred versions of it. I guess he wanted to make it perfect. But I think his first version of it is the one that I feel the most.

I am going to say two things and out of the two what is your first reaction on what you would pick? Brussels sprouts or beets?

NIM: Brussels sprouts.

Sunrise of sunset?

NIM: Sunset.

Salty or sweet?

NIM: Sweet.

Halloween or Christmas?

NIM: Christmas.

Book or Movie?

NIM: Book.

Fight or Flight?

NIM: Fight.